Anthology, Expedition, and Travelogue Down Memory Lanes and Memory Holes

Sunday, November 28, 2010

The 9-11 Cables: The State Department Records the World's Reaction

Below is what I believe is a small sampling of the State Department's cable traffic regarding the world's reaction to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

These cables, largely unredacted, provide an inside look into how the world, foreign governments, and the staff at American embassy reacted to the horrors of that day.

For example, the cable traffic from the US Embassy in Austria reveals the Austrian government moved quickly to protect the US Embassy while an Austrian phone company moved to provide free calling to the United States. An Algerian Minister wept at the destruction, while the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) broke a years-long "boycott?" and ignoring of the US Embassy and sent its condolences. Embassies throughout the world, embassies reported being inundated by expressions of support from the people, governments, and organizations in the lands in which they represented America. This was not limited to America's allies; nations with whom the United States had been recently or relatively recent conflict- Lebanon/Hizbullah- Vietnam-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia- also expressed their regards.

Not everyone was saddened by the events of 9-11. The American Embassy in Beirut reported on "celebratory" gun fire in the Lebanese city of Tripoli. However, it is important to know that Arabs and Muslims were not the only people lauding the destruction of the World Trade Center. The American Embassy Belgrade received taunting phone calls of supporters of the 9-11 attacks, probably right-wing or fascist Serbs disgruntled by the drubbings administered to them by the US military in Bosnia and two years before in Kosovo. US Embassy Manila informed Foggy Bottom that a group of diasporic Filipino Communists in the Netherlands engaged in victim blaming, holding American foreign policy to response for occurred on 9-11.

The highly redacted cables from the US Embassies in China and Uzbekistan tell us that plotting for the eventual American reaction was already a foot within twenty-four hours of the attacks. The relevant data is edited but given the geographic locations of both those nations, I think it is safe to assume they are talking about Afghanistan.

A final note. There is nothing contained within these cables that provides any aid or comfort to the 9-11 truth movement. Sorry.